Is a Meteorologist a Drought Expert?

David Karoly is a professor of meteorology who also holds a degree in applied mathematics. He is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) insider who wore multiple hats while working on the 2007 version of the climate bible.

For example, Karoly was a lead author for Chapter 1 of the Working Group 2 report. Titled Assessment of Observed Changes and Responses in Natural and Managed Systems, the introduction tell us:

We’re told that IPCC reports are the work of thousands of scientists. But, in fact, a small group of people fill a suspicious number of key positions. (See the bottom of this post for David Vaughan’s five IPCC roles – and the bottom of this one for the five hats worn by Gabriele Hegerl.)

Earlier today, Australian journalist Andrew Bolt published a fascinating pair of letters authored by Stewart Franks. An engineering professor, Franks says he has been busy publishing research papers “in the top-ranked international peer-reviewed literature” regarding droughts and floods. But the media keeps interviewing Karoly about such matters, instead.

Karoly is a meteorologist. He has no expertise in floods or droughts. He’s also hopelessly tainted by his close association with the activist World Wildlife Fund. (That organization, as I’ve noted before, has a financial interest in promoting scare stories. When the public feels alarmed, it writes cheques to environmental groups.)

In 2003 Karoly was the lead author for a 2003 WWF publication that claimed global warming was contributing to “Australia’s worst drought.” The next year he helped write another WWF report titled Climate Change – Solutions for Australia. To this day he remains a member of the WWF’s Climate Witness Science Advisory Panel.

What part of your judgment can’t be trusteddon’t do scientists such as Karoly not understand? If they want the public to have faith in their expert opinions they cannot associate themselves with activist groups. It destroys their credibility. (What does it say, moreover, about the IPCC that it sees no problem appointing WWF-associated personnel to senior roles? More on that here.)

But to get back to engineering professor Franks, his second letter is addressed directly to Karoly. It reads, in part:

When will you accept that CO2 is not the answer to everything? When will you decline an interview…[due to your lack of appropriate expertise]…You are arguably the best example of the corruption of the IPCC process…Shame on you.

It’s about time these sorts of matters received a public airing. Based on the research I’ve personally been conducting it seems unlikely that 20, 50, or 100 years from now history will be kind to the IPCC. Nor will it be kind to all those scientists who sat on the sidelines, who said nothing while this train wreck of an organization influenced major government decisions.